Bangkok IV Day 1: Baby's First Flight & Pathumwan Princess Hotel
We had initially planned to bring the whole family to Perth, about a 5-hour flight away from Singapore. I was still very optimistic, until I realised that our littlest baby is a very light sleeper. Unlike her brother and sister, who are heavy sleepers like me and can sleep just about anywhere, the littlest takes after her dad who has never fully slept on the plane like ever (not even on his long flight to USA)!
The good thing is that she is not affected by white noise such as the TV, traffic, talking, etc. However, we were not going to take the risk of managing a crying baby on a red eye 5-hour flight! Instead, we decided to go to Bangkok as it's just 2 hours away from Singapore.
On the day of our flight, we headed to Jewel Changi to have lunch before boarding our plane. If you're at least 3 hours ahead of your take-off time, you can check in your luggage at Jewel Early Check-in Lounge.
Checking in our luggage via the self check-in counters
Love the beautiful vortex in the middle of Jewel
We had lunch at Kam's Roast, famed for their roast meat noddles.
Roast meat & roast duck noodles
The restaurant's signature dish, suckling pig, was expensive but so delicious! 😋
After lunch, we headed to Terminal 2 to board our plane.
It's not a trip to the airport without a ride on the airport trolley! 😄
Departures board at Terminal 2
Our tickets via Singapore Airlines cost us only S$240 per adult/child!
However, our experience on this flight was not very satisfactory. For some reason, this flight was a lot more chaotic than our return flight.
First, the cabin crew insisted that I did not order Child Meal for my kids when I was sure I did. Second, my baby also did not get her baby food even though a member of the cabin crew told me they will give it to me later. They never came back and I did not push for it because my baby had not started weaning yet and I only wanted to keep the food for future use. Lastly, none of my kids received the usual toys that we've come to expect when we travel with Singapore Airlines. Although I know it's not easy to serve meals on a 2-hour flight but the crew on the return flight could do all of the above right so I'm very sure it's an anomaly!
I didn't really complain, mainly because I was too busy handling my cranky baby, but on hindsight, the crew could've been more organised! They also missed out another passenger's lunch and that guy was really upset! 😞
Kids enjoying the entertainment and meals on board
Adult meal comes with Udders ice cream! Still love the food served by Singapore Airlines the best of all the airlines we have flown with! ❤️
Chicken rice with authentic chilli sauce! Yum! 😋
As for the littlest, she had a lot of difficulty coping with the air pressure during take off and landing. This is completely new to me because both my older kids have no issues with air pressure when they were babies. They were ok with sucking on their pacifiers and sleeping in my arms. The littlest baby, on the other hand, does not like pacifiers so I tried nursing instead. Nursing wasn't entirely helpful; maybe because the position made the air pressure worse? Anyway, I oscillated between nursing and forcing her to suck on a pacifier, because I was desperate to try everything in order to see what works. She wiggled and cried for the entire take off, stopping only when we were in the air.
Eventually I managed to get her to sleep just long enough for me to eat my lunch, thank God! Of course it didn't last long and she was soon awake but well at least I got to eat!
Sleeping in the baby bassinet
When we finally landed in Bangkok, I was so relieved that we made it! We took the cab from the airport to our hotel, Pathumwan Princess Hotel.
Pathumwan Princess Hotel located just above MBK center
Enjoying our welcome drinks
We had booked the Superior King via Agoda at S$143.50 per room per night (without breakfast). We added breakfast at a special rate at the Front Desk and you can read more about our breakfast experience here. We got 2 connecting rooms to accommodate our whole family.
Room with king size bed for the mum-in-law, my older girl and boy
Room with twin super single beds for the hubby and me (baby cot in the middle)
TV and study table
Left: Closet and luggage shelf; Right: Inside the closet.
Bathroom with bath tub!
Usual toiletries and the very cute elephant made of towels!
Detailed view of the toiletries available
Baby cot with blanket, bolster and cot bumper
Baby girl when she woke up the next morning after a good night's sleep 😍
My girl is such a light sleeper that I was worried that she might not sleep well in an unfamiliar environment. However, she slept very well through the night! ♥️
Left: View of Bangkok from our hotel window; Right: Bird's eye view of our hotel pool.
Olympic size pool with very serious swimmers
Enjoying a good swim
Two hot tubs with water jets
Baby enjoying the soothing hot water of the hot tub! She is beginning to enjoy swimming :)
Kids enjoying the room after the swim
One of the best features of our hotel was its close proximity to MBK Shopping Center! We had some of our meals there but so far, nothing we had was really fantastic. Our first night we had a simple dinner at the food court and it was so-so.
Various food we had at MBK food court
Not the best start to our vacation but hopefully we'd find better food. We're in Bangkok after all!
